Archives for September, 2015

Australian LNG Projects are in Serious Trouble

There are currently six liquefied natural gas (“LNG”) projects under construction in Australia. According to the International Energy Agency, all of these projects would lose money at the current oil price of USD47/barrel(“bbl”), and most would struggle even with oil at USD60/bbl. I suspect that oil would have to approach…

Freight Goes to Heck, Now Even in the US

This was originally posted by Wolf Richter over at Wolf Street. It is re-posted here with permission. This is a very worrying signal for the global economy. The Dow Jones Transportation index has been warning us: by August 25, it was down 19% year-to-date before bouncing. It’s now off 13%.…

A Great Article by the IMF on Global Financial Interconnectedness

This 2010 IMF article remains pertinent today. Countries are financially interconnected through sovereign assets and liabilities, financial institutions and corporations. This of course leads to a very complicated risk profile where failure in one institution, such as Lehman Brothers in 2008, can have multiple unforeseen consequences. This article is an…

The High Cost of Real Estate in Australia

A million dollars will not buy much in Australia’s overpriced housing market. In Sydney, the largest Australian city of around 5 million people, house prices were up 20% over the past year. Here’s a look at what one million or so will buy in Sydney. Houses Newtown is an inner…

Specialty Metals & Minerals – Graphite

Carbon is the basis of all life on Earth. and of an enormous array of organic chemicals; such as hydrocarbons, and inorganic chemicals, such as carbon dioxide. Carbon can also bond with itself to form graphite, coal and diamonds. Graphite is comprised of stacked two dimensional layers of carbon atoms…